Is this accurate??

"ENFPs are introspective, values-oriented, inspiring, social and extremely expressive. They actively send their thoughts and ideas out into the world as a way to bring attention to what they feel to be important, which often has to do with ethics and current events. ENFPs are natural advocates, attracting people to themselves and their cause with excellent people skills, warmth, energy and positivity. ENFPs are described as creative, resourceful, assertive, spontaneous, life-loving, charismatic, passionate and experimental."

Seems like a good profile for a teacher/professor (which indeed is a career option listed as good for ENFPs, but of course it's also listed for about six other personality profiles!). But on a different day, I could have answered questions differently . . . so how accurate is this description?

"Book Smarts"

Click on the YouTube video (made in the UK) to find a quick "commercial" for good books.

Hmmm, I wonder how many students (or others for that matter!) concur with this use of books? I mean, some of us revere books, thinking that they're artifacts of value, repositories of the best of human values, ways of demonstrating the value of our profession. I've read at least four in the last week. ;-)

Typography

This Yahoo! video clip was created by students at Vancouver Film School. It's good. Check it out.

Typographics - Vancouver Film School (VFS) @ Yahoo! Video

"Finished in Two Sittings"

That's what Melissa Dahl, MSNBC.com's intern, said. I, too, finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in that same time-span. I liked it - as I have the other six books - because of the rolicking, detailed emotional ride Rowling sets out before her reader. She understands hooks of all kinds: emotional, visual, chronological, literal. A good read, but I wouldn't want to teach it!

Archives

That's what I like to call what I've accumulated in my office: found the textbook I used in 1990 to teach Technical Writing the first time I was at Century (called Lakewood then). I just couldn't toss it, not with my tidy marginalia: "Stress in class!" and "Note" and "Day 2 Exercise."

I've been trying to empty out the space so the sabbatical replacement can move in (he's been asking) and also so that I can start pruning my paper: like lilac bushes, take out a third every year. But I've been in that office for four years (having been across the hall in a closet for two before that), and so I have not adhered to this lilac-pruning maxim.

Today I had the following terrible-true thought: These archives must now become a potential data-source for research! "How does community college tech writing differ over the decades?" or "History of pedagogy via personal archive." I've got the artifacts. I really don't need such a project, of course, but I do need to get back to some kind of research. Get thee to the library!

Paper Cuts

So my pal Night Editor has her pulse on the current book scene: I'm jealous, of course. Here's a blog she introduced on her blog: Paper Cuts, by folks at The New York Times. Isn't that just the best title? Check it out.

Ten Days

That's about how long I'm into my "summer vacation." All week long I've been meaning to go into the office to clean it out, but all week long other tasks/opportunities have kept me away: sedum and geranium and Chinese lantern transplanting, not-the-best-novel reading, letter writing, bill paying, meal preparing, daughter chatting, biking. One of these days, I'm going to read an academic text - but I suppose I should count Adrienne Rich's Diving Into the Wreck and Arts of the Possible (Norton 2002), both of which I've read this week. She's amazing: brilliant, compassionate, angry. I need to read her newest book of essays, Poetry and Commitment (Norton 2007).

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

I suppose I like the Wallace Stevens' poems best, but these short animations might intrigue students. Click above to see them.

In the midst

Of grading, naturally, for the end of the semester. One voice tells me "Why read things closely at this point? Just assign a ballpark grade and be done with it." Another voice says, "Remember how much you hated working hard on a final project only to have the professor ignore your work? Don't be like that professor."

So I'm reading closely but trying not to write comments except for small notes with scores at the ends of essays and projects.

Perhaps going to this website, Campus Calm, will help me.